Raise your hand if you’ve never googled your own name! I’ve done it, not only for myself but also for my friends. My name generally brings up several hits for my two published books, and occasionally one for my fanzines posted at efanzines.com.

But the most recent time I did it I got hits for an “account executive” in the NYC area who shares my name, and also a hit for the website http://www.robertsabella.com/testimonials.html. Obviously I was interested in reading the “testimonials” on that page, but I don’t know if I can reprint them here without incurring the wrath of the other “Robert Sabella” whose website it is. So, if you’re interested in learning who my alter ego is, go to that site and start reading the testimonials. I guarantee at some point you will start chuckling.

Movies: We get free Tuesday movies through our cable/internet service, but since we retired in June we have only gone to a half-dozen of them. That is mostly a reflection of how picky I am when it comes to movies. I would rather sit home and read a book than watch a mediocre movie, even for free! And there are lots of types of movies I dislike: special-effects extravaganzas, thrillers, movies about crime, juvenile comedies, horror movies, stupid remakes, love stories, war stories. So after eliminating all of Hollywood’s most common genres, what’s left? So here are the movies we actually saw in 2010:

• Toy Story 3: a fabulous movie, the best of the series;
• Secretariat: a very good movie, if a bit predictable since I remember the horse and knew exactly what the climax of the movie would be before it even began;
• Morning Glory: a fun comedy which made me decide that Harrison Ford would be the ideal actor to play the role of me in the “Math Lab” movie (which will never be made ☺);
• The Social Network: a great movie, worth all the acclaim and “best-of-the-year” selections it has been getting. I rate this movie a “must-see”;
• Tangled: one of the better Disney animations I have ever seen, comparable to Beauty and the Beast, which was my all-time favorite (all right, except for some of the ones I loved when I was very young, such as Lady and the Tramp and 101 Dalmations);
• Harry Potter and the Endless Sequel: Not having read the books (I read volume 1 and somehow never got around to the second book, the same as with Lord of the Rings which I began reading 45 years ago and still haven’t gotten back to it), I found the plot somewhat random without a lot of sense, but it was enjoyable so long as you do not think about it too much.

I really want to see The King’s Speech, but for some reason that has not reached the local theaters yet. Why not? Are there too many nonsensical movies taking screen space that they cannot find a slot for one of the few serious movies of the year (along with The Social Network)? And what does that say about the movie-going public?